


I'm No Predator

by onorobo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ficlet, Food, Gen, Gore, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-War Bucky Barnes, Vegan Bucky, Vignette, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 03:41:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6888493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onorobo/pseuds/onorobo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky hated the idea of horses being brought into the war, even if he could never quite work up the gall to voice it.  Something about it just didn't sit right with him, like they'd been forced into a fight that wasn't theirs, how unfair it would be to die without having a clue about what was going on. He felt stupid for thinking about it, out of all the other things to think about. He remembered the drop in his own stomach when he peeled a draft notice out of its envelope.</p><p>Just whose fight was this supposed to be, anyway?</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm No Predator

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-war to post-winter Bucky vignettes about coming to terms with violence.  
> 

In 1928 Bucky Barnes sees his best friend choke down a glass of raw liver bigger than the size of his dad’s balled fist. It looks slimy. Bucky once saw a neighborhood cat maiming something unrecognizable and red, but cats are predators. He watches Steve’s skinny frame lurch through a suppressed heave. Something about it feels perverse. Steve’s no predator.

 

In 1937 Bucky reads The Jungle for the first time and looks down at a plate of his mother’s meatloaf. It used to be his favorite, but now all he can think about is the face it used to have.  
“James, finish your plate."  
He’s a good kid, so he does. The Jungle was, after all, about worker’s treatment. The face is incidental.

 

In 1942 Bucky ships out to war for the first time and sees a line of cavalry and men punctured by mortar. He stumbles face down into a slick spot that turns out to be flesh piled in the mud. He’s not sure which parts were Daniel’s and which were the horse's he was sitting on. He thinks about The Jungle for the first time in years and finally understands why nobody fished that worker out of the vat; it all looks the same from this side.

Bitching about rations is the favored past time at camp.  
“I hear the Krauts get sausage in theirs."  
"And _two_ packs of smokes."  
Grievances about anything more serious seem to stick in everyone's throats. Some things just go without saying.

 

In 1944 the sky is pitch black. None of the stars are visible, but Bucky can see, finally. The battlefield is lit up in blooms of bright blue. Like fireflies, but colder. Nobody knows what it is, but every hair is raised off of their skin. Bucky sees it before they do. He’s at the front of the hill. He feels his jaw go slack. One of his men behind him stupidly says "something smells like meat in a toaster." He wishes he didn’t respond. He wishes he could take it back. But the words are already out of his mouth.  
“It is meat in a toaster."  
They all watch, faces blanched blue, as a man dissolves in front of them before he can finish screaming.  
Bucky spends the next two nights in a cage before two men stop in front of it, speaking in Swiss. One points at him, and eyes rake over his body. He wishes he were back in the cage.

 

In 1945 he’s not in a cage anymore. He’s waking up at the bottom of a ravine, distantly aware of ground moving underneath his back. There’s cold air against his face, snow is melting in his open mouth. He can taste it. His sleeve feels stiff with ice. There’s a voice-, no, a man is pulling him by the scruff of his coat. The pressure on his neck makes it harder to breathe. When his eyes finally focus, they see his body leaving a bright red ribbon of itself behind. Just pieces now, really, being dragged to the vat.

\---

There’s a gap in the record. Something inside of him is missing. Blown out ages ago. Now there’s just a curl of smoke. Maybe. Can something be missing if it was never there? Maybe he’s always been just pieces in the shape of a man.

He knows what the English word ‘meatloaf’ means, but he doesn’t remember learning it.

Freezers are for preserving meat. He knows that, too. Making meat last and last. Maybe next time the pieces will get freezer burn and they’ll finally be thrown out.

He makes a bit of raw meat of his own.  
Blows a little life out on his own.

In the back of his mind there’s a vague notion of a boy. His lips are stained cherry-red, grimacing around bared teeth. A ring of blood frames each one individually. He’s choking on a retch.

\---

It’s 2014 when he finds out he had a name once, a long time ago, but he hasn’t learned the year yet. It’s Steve … Something, and he’s not a boy at all, he’s not a mission either. He almost didn’t recognize him, but his lips are still cherry-red. His teeth are still polished with blood. How long has he been like this, choking?

  
He pulls him out of the water and lays him down on the shore. It’s piece of himself in the mud. Maybe. It must have been cut out of him at some point. He couldn’t tell which pieces were his and which were the man’s.  
That night, he curls up in a drain pipe and dreams about rotting. Meat spoils if it's left out of the freezer for too long. He knows that.  
In the morning, he reads a memorial about himself. Men get these sorts of things when they die. Meat gets a name when it’s whole; it’s one of their pieces. His was ‘Bucky’. Just a thread in the snow now, but maybe a piece the body could follow back to the man.

 

In 2015 he does follow that piece back to the man. Not to James Buchanan Barnes who died a long time ago in the ice and got his memorial, but to Steve. His teeth are white, not red, and his mouth smiles every time it says the name ‘Bucky’. Dates mark the top of every page in a pile of notebooks filled with all the parts of himself he could get back. Bucky's therapist recommended keeping them, and she was right. It turns out those things really do matter to people who can only live for so long, or should only live for so long. All those years, every little bit and piece, it adds up and makes a whole.

  
Bucky remembers an alley, and the phrase 'something the cat dragged in’. He thinks about it a lot. It’s just a thing at that point, and not a thing you want near you. But even something special, even something that’s really valuable, doesn’t look like much if you carve it up enough.  
Bucky's had his share of it. He’d given his share of it, unwillingly, even when he begged for it to stop and it didn’t. He’d seen enough pieces at the end of his own hands for 10 lifetimes.

 

It’s 2016 and Bucky Barnes is in his apartment with his best boy, Steve, rinsing off a huge pile of fat, soft plums and thinks to himself, believing it - really believing it - for the first time in his life: "I’m no predator”.

**Author's Note:**

> Fic inspired by the fact the word vegan was coined right around the time Bucky 'died'.  
> (i.e. Somebody just let my son eat his fucking plums in peace.)


End file.
